War Strategy

[Lafayette]

SIMPLE GOOD SENSE ABOUT WAR

The West has come to the following conclusion regarding the ongoing war in Ukraine, and I must agree with its good-sense as expressed here:

This is not a simple matter. Ukrainian forces use mainly Soviet-era weaponry. In the short term, they need more of it: things like Mig fighter jets and T -72 tanks, as well as s-300 missiles and Gvozdika howitzers. nato countries that used to be Soviet satellites, such as the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia, have stocks of such kit, and have given Ukraine some of it. They should hand over more. But it will soon run out, and cannot be replenished, so the West needs to start supplying the more modern armaments used by most nato countries, and training Ukrainian soldiers to use them. This week America, Britain and Canada said they would provide Ukraine with heavy artillery—a step in the right direction.

The good news is that Nato’s supply lines into Ukraine, mainly from Poland, are now well established. So far, Russia has not found an effective way to disrupt them. If the weapons continue to flow and the war grinds on, Russia’s economy, only around the size of Spain’s even before the war began and economic sanctions were imposed, will not be able to keep supplying weapons on the same scale that Nato can. If Mr Putin is to be defeated, and Ukraine allowed to determine its own future, it is not just the Ukrainian soldiers in Donbas, currently being pummelled by Russian jets, missiles and artillery, who will have to keep their nerve. Nato must be steadfast, too.

The Ukrainians have proven their worth, and if noodle-brain Putin understand what is about to happen, then he wont sleep nights.

The supplies being sent to the Ukrainians are what is needed to fight a standing-army that seeks simply to occupy and keep a selected portion of land. The selected portion being that which borders of Russia and contained a good many Ukrainians who spoke daily Russian. Of course, Russia could have simply invited them to cross the line from the Ukraine into Russia. But that seems not to have occurred to knot-head Putin.

The arms that are arriving are specifically for fighting a standing army that is employing a great many tanks and vehicles to move its people around. And, it seems, these means are not as good as they should be and have thwarted efforts badly in other fighting inside the Ukraine.

The next few weeks will tell as both the US and the EU send to the Ukraine the fire-power that they so badly wanted and need ...

 

[Antiwar]

Quote:

Nuclear weapons are a core component of NATO ...

NATO’s nuclear deterrence policy and forces

Nuclear weapons are a core component of NATO’s overall capabilities for deterrence and defence, alongside conventional and missile defence forces. NATO is committed to arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation, but as long as nuclear weapons exist, it will remain a nuclear alliance.

www.nato.int

 

[Rich2018]

Russia can only lose a war of attrition.

 

[Lafayette]

From the Economist here: Russian war criminals may never be brought to justice

Ukraine’s prosecutor-general said on April 3rd that 410 civilians had been killed around Kyiv. Many more bodies will be found. The Economist saw the corpse of the mayor of Motyzhyn, a suburb, blindfolded and shot, apparently by Russian forces, along with her family. We heard details of the murder of Ukrainian men in Bucha, ordered by a Russian commander. Human Rights Watch, a charity, reports that Russian soldiers threw a smoke grenade into a basement in Vorzel, near Irpin, then shot a woman and her child as they emerged.

Evidence like this has rightly caused a worldwide outcry. Ukraine’s president and Poland’s prime minister have accused Russia of genocide. Joe Biden, America’s president, has called the enormities in Bucha a war crime. And the un secretary general asked for an investigation into the killings, alongside the several already under way.

Investigators are likely to find that Russian forces should be indicted, even if they have not killed on such a systematic scale as to have committed genocide. The Geneva Conventions, which Russia has signed, outlaw war crimes, including willful killing, causing great suffering and targeting civilians. The murders in Bucha would count. So would the bombing of the Mariupol theatre on which the Russian word for children was written large enough for targeters to see from the sky. Russia’s invasion was itself a crime of aggression, as defined by the International Criminal Court (icc), which tries individuals for actions under international law. And Russia’s vast and indiscriminate shelling of Ukrainian cities is a crime against humanity, defined by the icc as participation in and knowledge of “a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population”.

But also they neither will they ever sojourn in the EU where their "'Ukranian War Records" will be stored.

And, if they do come, they will most certainly be arrested. Already, France is searching amongst the flock of Russians who have purchased properties in the southeast of France (around Nice and Monaco). And they are many. Some of these properties have been seized given that the owners are supposed to be involved in the present war with the Ukraine as suppliers of war materials.

Per se, they are not Russian war-criminals. But it is entirely possible that they were, in fact, involved in the contracts employed by Putin to support the Russian army. Which assisted that army in attacking the Ukraine ...